[sudo-discuss] Spiritual analysis of last weeks Meeting

[Anon195714]

Yo's-

Re. what happened:

For the most part we're coming from geek/nerd/hacker culture, which is
inspired by building stuff that makes peoples' lives better, and ideally
that changes society in positive ways. 

Geeks/nerds/hackers, don't generally enjoy dealing with political &
administrative detail-work.  So when the time comes to do that kind of
stuff, it feels like "doing chores," and of course that brings down the
energy level a bit.

Though, in any social group, there are always some people who _do_ enjoy
doing political & administrative work.  More so in any group that is
engaged at any level with social & political issues, which we are, by
nature of the kinds of projects we're working on.

The nature of "building stuff" is "convergent," in the sense that, given
a technical problem, there are convergent solutions that are empirically
correct, and there are other possible outcomes that are not.  So while
there may be some debate about _which_ correct solution to use, in the
end there's convergence around something that actually works.

The nature of political and administrative decisions, is "divergent," in
the sense that there is not a range of "right answers" that can be
discovered empirically and everyone can agree on.  Instead, the answers
that appear right to each person, depend on where each person is coming
from ideologically and philosophically. 

So far we appear to cover a pretty diverse range, from liberal to
vaguely socialist to left-libertarian to anarchist
(left-very-libertarian;-).  Some might even debate whether those words
are the right words to use or whether they cover the whole range. 
Within each of those and many other shades of belief, there are ranges
of "right solutions," but between ideologies & philosophies, there's
much room for debate. 

Things can bog down when differences in ideology and philosophy haven't
been dealt with in depth before they come to a specific issue and get
stuck. 

We need to talk more about our underlying philosophies and ideologies. 
We need to make room for each person to describe their core beliefs that
bear on how a group should organize and operate.  And in that process we
might find that we end up agreeing on a set of core principles, even if
we disagree about other things. 

Personally I'm in favor of something like representative democracy,
where we choose a set of individuals to take care of the administrative
tasks, and empower them to do so.  Thus the people who are eager to do
those tasks will do so, and those of us who want to stick to science &
technology and not deal with admin tasks, can do so. 

In the end there's always recourse to putting things up for a direct
decision of the members, so there's not much risk in designating roles
and a scope of power or capability for each role.  

Though, I find the use of language such as "ruled by a police system" to
be unhelpful.  I'm in favor of designating one or more people to be able
to moderate disagreements that may come up, and handle other tasks of
that nature: after all, in the end they're our friends & colleagues, and
if they misuse their delegated roles, we can recall them. 

As for egotism, it seems to me that egotism occurs when someone puts
themselves ahead of the group and causes everyone else to have to expend
energy.  Yes that includes some instances that begin as a principled
block, _but_ I'm not taking any position on whether the present instance
is one of those. 

To my mind the ability to defer to someone else's judgement or to their
delegated role, is an exercise in overcoming the desire of the ego to
"have it my way." 

Ideally each of us has a value of respect for the group as a whole, and
can come to debating issues with an outlook of being sensitive to the
mood in the room and what would enable the group to move forward
constructively.  And that includes asking ourselves what it is that
we're asking others to do, and how much effort we're expecting others to
make in any given situation.

-G.


=====


On 13-03-18-Mon 3:00 PM, Patrick Schmidt wrote:
> Dear Sudoers,
>
> what happened last week again?
>
> Everybody was excited, we had a birthday, we had awesome food and
> awesome people.
> As hackers we come to share what we are passionate about, get
> inspired, plan new projects,
> and are excellent to each other, work together on things at Sudo and
> plan awesome activities.
>
> But than a big rupture. A new ever returning topic comes to the agenda,
> the whole energy of the room fades away.
>
> The looks of the faces of the people all say the same:
> lets get as quickly over this point as possible.
>
> But we had to go through this for one hour, an EGO driven conversation starts.
>
> Its about regulating, rules, hypotheticals, bureaucracy, installing
> special sudo functions almost like police.
>
> we were arguing an hour over some trivial wording.
>
> is this really the way we want to go?
>
> Not being able to solve problems in the moment at the meetings?
> Or to keep the positive energy going at the meetings?
> Paralyzing ourselved for one hour again instead of sharing?
>
> Do we really want to loose somuch time about wording of a document
> which is only read
> by the people who wrote the document?
>
> We all enjoy coming to sudoroom. For a growing and thriving community
> it should be easy
> to tell friends about it, invite people and say "just be excellent to
> each other and check it out",
> nobody will read any commendments or laws before coming.
>
> But what would new people see at the meetings? the same uninviting
> left brain driven discussions we see in politics and law...
>
> Do we really want to be ruled by a police system again within our
> newborn community?
>
> We are all one, one community, one people, one tribe.
>
> Dont get me wrong, I dont want to blame, accuse or criticize anybody.
>
> I want to put awareness of what the Eg wants:
>
> The EGO seperates itself from all the others. The EGO wants to hang on
> to the old system
> of ruling, devide and conquer. The EGO is afraid of a world of the 'WE"
>
> We have to get over the stage of EGO driven tactics to create a truely
> free community.
>
> So what can we do about it?
>
> we have to show a lot of love towards the EGO driven minds. Hold em
> tight, say we love em, and that we appreciate their effort for the
> community.
> After all (lets hope) they have good intentions.
> But we also have to make it clear that we dont need all these
> regulations and the seperation from the rest of the world.
>
> we are one big family, and only if we accept this we can build a better future.
>
> just my personal feelings,
> p.
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